Re: emacs-27 561e9fb: Improve documentation of project.el commands

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 23.03.2020 16:29, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > Regardless of how we define a project, this heading can say "Commands
> > for handling files in a project" without a loss of clarify, I believe.
>
> It isn't about clarity, I think, it's about making the feature less
> abstract and more lucrative to our audience.

I'm rather against this part because it brings in an inaccuracy as well: 
all project commands work on arbitrary kinds of files. Not just source 
files, but documentation, build configuration, etc.

And making it seem like they handle only a subset of what they actually 
do doesn't sound "lucrative" to me.

> > > I decided to compromise, as I believe currently no one
> > > really uses this for non-program files.  If this ever becomes a
> > > practical problem, we can always rephrase.
> >
> > You're probably responding to my second quote here. But why not say
> > "Command for handling files in a project"? Again, no real loss of
> > clarity, this sentence is not a definition.
>
> For the same reason: to be more attractive to the reader.

That makes an assumption that the reader is a programmer.

> > > > And is "hierarchy of directories" a better term than "directory tree"?
> > >
> > > I think it's the same thing.  Wed use both interchangeably in our
> > > documentation.  Why, you think "directory tree" will be easier to
> > > understand or something?
> >
> > This choice of words gives me a somewhat more complicated mental image,
> > like a sparse collection of subdirectories, where some are included, and
> > some are not. Which kind of comes out to the same thing, but in a more
> > complex way.
>
> That's not what I had in mind, but these commands do support sparse
> trees as well: it's all about what are "the project files", isn't it?

True.

> Would "directory tree hierarchy" solve your problems here?

It's still a more complex explanation than I would choose. But please 
never mind me here, in the end you probably know your the audience (the 
people who read the manuals) better.